Wireless data communication continues to evidence significant growth. Wi-Fi-based networks are one example for networks used to provide local connectivity, e.g. for tethering devices to a wide area network or for other local communication scenarios. In a wireless mesh network, devices may be configured to communicate in a mesh network topology using the IEEE802.11s standard, for example.
Many mesh networks are traditionally based on stationary Wi-Fi nodes. It would be desirable to use portable devices as nodes for a Wi-Fi mesh network. However, it may be challenging to provide adequate battery lifetime for a portable device which acts as a node in a Wi-Fi network. The long term power consumption of a Wi-Fi interface may rapidly drain the battery power of a portable device, in particular when it acts as a as a gateway, i.e. a soft access point. For illustration, in a Wi-Fi mesh network all nodes are typically active even when data is not sent via them. The reason for this is the lack of good and deployed “active” sleep modes in Wi-Fi. The power consumption of this active mode with no data may rapidly drain battery power and may decrease battery lifetime.
While other communication standards, such as Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Zigbee, Wibree, Near Field Communication (NFC), or Z-wave do not suffer from significant power consumption outlined above, the bandwidth provided by these techniques may not be sufficient for the bit rate requirements which may be required by tethering services, for example.